It's a bit of a stretch to say all Joe Carroll does is throw touchdowns, but not by much. The Thomas Jefferson senior quarterback, in his first year as a starter, has flipped the switch on the Jaguars offense from a grind-it-out run-first clock eater into a high-octane scoring machine.

In seven games this season, Carroll has thrown for a WPIAL-leading 28 touchdowns, has thrown at least five on four different occasions, including a six-touchdown performance Sept. 21 against Trinity, and is five away from the school's single season record of 33 set by Tyler Wehner in 2008.

Q: Considering you're a first-year starter, did you expect to put up the kind of numbers you have this year?

A: I expected to do well. I expected to play well and put up some good numbers, but when I went out in my first game and threw five touchdowns, I was like, “whoa.”

Q: Are you going to break the single-season touchdown record this week at Uniontown?

A: There's a chance I will, but we're just going to go out and execute and see what happens.

Q: How has your relationship been with your receivers?

A: We work hard to get on the same page and know what we're going to use that week. And, in the games, I have to make sure that they see what I see.

Q: Do they make you look good, or do you make them look good?

A: I guess it goes both ways sometimes. There are times I'll just throw one out there, and they'll go up and catch the ball, and sometimes they'll just make the play.

Q: How do you react when you know that the coaching staff wants to establish the running game a bit more?

A: We've got to get the running game going when we get to the playoffs and the week we play West Mifflin (Oct. 26) because we have to slow teams up from blitzing us. If we become one-dimensional, then people can stop us, and if we have that two-dimensional offense, it will be harder to stop the team.

Q: How do you avoid looking past Uniontown and to that game with West Mifflin?

A: We're just going to fine-tune everything and stay healthy so that we're nice and crisp going into next week.

Q: How much motivation are you going to have going into that game, considering West Mifflin ended your 37-game conference winning streak?

A: I wasn't playing a lot last year, but a lot of those guys are back, and I know they want to get back at them for ending our conference winning streak last year.

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